So that’s why Ryan’s such a La La lovely mover!
How Hollywood’s hottest heart-throb inherited his musical talent... from a bugle-blowing, organ-playing Victorian war hero
IT’S been billed as an American classic, an all-singing, all-dancing throwback to the golden age of Hollywood. But might La La Land, the blockbuster musical that won a record-breaking seven Golden Globes and which has been nominated for 14 Oscars, owe just a little of its appeal to Britain?
The film’s Canadian star Ryan Gosling plays a jazz pianist and he stunned the cast and crew with his accomplished playing, after taking piano lessons six days a week for three months before filming began.
Accepting a Golden Globe for his performance earlier this month, Gosling paid tribute to his long-term partner Eva Mendes, who was nursing her terminally-ill brother during filming while also pregnant with the couple’s second child.
But there was another person he could have thanked in his speech – the man from whom Ryan inherited his musical talent.
The Mail on Sunday has learned that Ryan’s great-great-grandfather, George Edward Gosling, was a talented musician and war hero from London who volunteered for the British Army as a bugler in early 1882, at the tender age of 15. Within months, he was in action as part of a 13,000-strong British force sent to quell an uprising in Egypt, in which local insurgents were seeking to overthrow the British and French.
The details of his valour are lost to the mists of time, but such was his gallantry at the pivotal Battle of Tell El Kebir in 1882 – at which the uprising was comprehensively quashed – that he came to the attention of Queen Victoria. She presented him with an engraved bugle at the end of the victorious campaign.
The family photo above shows a remarkable resemblance between Ryan and his great-grandfather George Percy Gosling, son of Bugler George Edward Gosling, who was also a talented organist.
The picture was taken in Ontario after George Edward emigrated to Canada aged 21.
Linda Stephens, 58, Ryan’s third cousin once removed, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I never knew George Edward Gosling but I remember his brother Charles, who was my greatgrandfather. He told me that they came over here for a better life.
‘George was very musical – that must be where Ryan gets his talent from – and there is a real Gosling resemblance. They all look the spitting image of each other.’
George Edward Gosling, the eldest of six children of a painter and decorator, was born in Cornwall in 1867 but grew up in Portland Road, Notting Hill, which recently featured on the BBC social history series The Secret History of Our Streets. Then, it was filled with new properties sandwiched between the stucco splendour of Ladbroke Grove and the ‘Piggeries and Potteries’ – London’s most squalid gypsy camp – at the bottom of the hill.
TODAY, the most expensive house in Portland Road will fetch £14.6million, while the street is also home to a council estate housing some of London’s poorest citizens. George Edward quit the Army soon after returning from Egypt and he, his mother and five siblings emigrated to Canada in 1889 on the ship The Canadian.
They settled in the provincial town of Cornwall, Ontario, where Gosling worked on the railways until he retired in 1932.
His obituary in the Ottawa Journal on May 22, 1948, stated: ‘George E. Gosling, for many years representative of the Canadian National Express Company, died in Cornwall General Hospital Thursday night, in his 81st year. He had been in ill health more than a year. A native of England, he served with British troops as a bugler in the Egyptian campaign and, in 1885, was presented with an engraved bugle by Queen Victoria. The bugle is in possession of his son, George P. Gosling.
‘He was an accomplished organist and played in churches in London, Arnprior and Montreal, as well as in three local churches.’
Ryan, 36, is descended from George Edward’s son George Percy, who ran Goslings Travel Bureau. His son George Bigelow Gosling was Ryan’s grandfather.
The actor’s father, Thomas, worked for a paper mill and his mother, Donna, was a secretary and teacher.
But it was his uncle Perry, an Elvis impersonator, who gave him the showbiz bug. He inspired him, at 12, to attend an open audition for a revival of Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club. Ryan landed a two-year contract, his first step towards stardom.
Despite his obvious acting skills, Ryan puts the musical ability he inherited from Bugler Gosling to good use. Away from the film set, he is a multi-instrumentalist in Dead Man’s Bones – the indie rock band released their only album in 2009 – as well as providing songs for several film soundtracks.
Now nominated for an Oscar for his La La Land role, Gosling has said: ‘Piano had always been something I wish I had the time to learn. What other job is it a part of your duty to just sit in front of a piano for three months and play? It was really one of the most fulfilling preproduction periods I’ve ever had.’
No doubt his great-great-grandfather would have agreed.
AllA the Gosling boys are the spitting image of each other